


The Trials of Chirrut Imwe

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pre-Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 20:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10421469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: Chirrut replays the scene over and over in his mind as he trains. He pictures it each time a punch lands and with every impact of his foot against his unsuspecting fellow initiates who continue to spar with him though they have figured out by now that it is a bad idea to inquire whether he is okay and an even worse one to ask about Baze. When he strikes, he strikes out at the memory that will not give him any rest.This is a companion piece toActs of Proofand should probably be read after that to make the most sense.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of doing a companion piece to "Acts of Proof" would not let me alone so this happened. I cannot really write action scenes, though, so the actual fighting part of the trials is not really represented, but that wasn't the hardest part of the trials anyway so it's okay.

_Don’t you love me?_

_No._

Chirrut replays the scene over and over in his mind as he trains. He pictures it each time a punch lands and with every impact of his foot against his unsuspecting fellow initiates who continue to spar with him though they have figured out by now that it is a bad idea to inquire whether he is okay and an even worse one to ask about Baze. When he strikes, he strikes out at the memory that will not give him any rest. The hopeless, helpless feeling of standing there, stuck, transfixed as he asked, as he pleaded, and Baze said no. Baze who wouldn’t look at him, who wouldn’t touch him. Baze, a man gentle as the morning sunlight when it would shine through their window onto his face, who could not lift his eyes from the ground as he answered. And the image of that moment becomes more ridiculous every time he replays it. Because this is Baze, after all. Baze who has thousands of feelings pressed and tucked into every inch of his lumbering, heavy, beautiful body, and millions of soft words cataloged in his mind that are rarely allowed to filter down to his mouth because he worries about every single one of them, whether they are right or wrong, whether they reveal too much, whether he can trust them, trust himself.

The idea that Baze would ever stand in front of him and answer that question so simply, so matter of factly and with no emotion bares no relation to the man that Chirrut knows, the man that Chirrut loves so hard it feels like it cuts his hands open, flays them right down to the meat and bone under his skin, skin that Baze would touch like it was precious, press kisses and laughter and smiles into when they were too bright for him to let them exist anywhere else. Something is amiss with this situation, and Chirrut is bound and determined to suss it out, to locate the truth of it and then beat that truth within an inch of its life until he can change it simply because he despises what he’s looking at. This is not the way his world is supposed to be. 

 

Chirrut stands in front of the masters, arms crossed over his chest, glaring at them. He is supposed to control his face, he knows, but he cannot manage that. Not right now when all he wants to do is tear everything around him apart. “I want the truth,” he says, and his voice does not shake. Not even a little bit.

“Baze Malbus decided to leave our temple to become a master of the kyber caves.” The master’s voice does not waver, either, but it spills a strange unease into the fabric of the Force that makes Chirrut’s fingers twitch.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Baze Malbus left of his own accord. He is no longer your brother. No longer your concern,” another one says in that same tone with that same ripple.

It tugs at him, makes him want to fidget in his own skin. Something about it is just not right. Just as this situation, this scenario they attempt to paint for him is not right. “Baze would not leave the temple.” It is a truth that he will fight them on. Chirrut has examples, years of them, that he could call to the forefront to prove his point, and they know it. They all know it. They probably know it better than he does.

There is a sigh, a third master, and her voice is a little softer. “We understand how it can be hard to believe that he would leave, but it was his decision. He has left the path. You have no more reason to worry about him.”

“Baze Malbus would not leave the temple,” Chirrut repeats, thrusting his chin up and out, high, defiant because he is right. He is right, and he does not know why they are doing this thing, why they are sitting in front of him and clearly misspeaking, clearly twisting something out of its range, coloring it as darkly as any lie even if there is some truth in it. Because Baze did leave--he watched him, taunted him from the crowd, called accusations into the air that now he wishes he could retrieve because he knows, in the heart of him he knows, that they have scarred Baze as much as any cut--and no one was at his back, no one forced him out by blade or staff. He took the steps himself, but that does not mean there is nothing else underneath all of it, that does not mean that his feet were not hastened by something.

“Is it that you don’t think he would leave the temple or that you don’t think he would have left you?” 

The question is meant to undermine something in him. It is meant to shake his faith in the man who is not here to defend himself either from their words or Chirrut’s doubts. He counts his breaths, tries to control the beat of his heart, struggles to not react the way that he wants to, which is with fury. Fury has been his nightly companion now, and he tries not to give in to its embrace.

“Initiate Imwe, perhaps Baze Malbus does not love you as clearly as you love him. Have you considered that this might be true?”

“No.” He doesn’t even take time to consider the answer, barely takes time to consider the question itself. The word rips out of his throat, the echo of the one that Baze gave him weeks ago. 

_Don’t you love me?_

_No._

That was the lie. Chirrut can feel it now when he rolls it around in his head, when he traces it in the Force. The impact of that word on his heart overwhelmed him in the instant, made him forget to look at it deeper, consider the lines and the edges and the weight of the thing. Plus there was the fact that Baze had never lied before. And Chirrut wasn’t sure that it was something he was even capable of doing. Until it happened. Until it shattered him.

But now he knows better. That was the lie. That was the thing Baze had to do in order to get him away, to make him stop asking questions before Baze broke and told him everything the way that Baze always had in the past. There never was a secret Baze could keep for long when Chirrut wanted to know it. Baze, always so careful with words, would gladly give all of them to Chirrut when he asked. And Chirrut would delight in them, roll around in them like a cat with string, happy, content. 

Now the masters sit before him and repeat that lie and expect him to swallow it as though it is something lovely. It is not. It is glass on his tongue, acid in his throat. It is a black fist encircling his heart, squeezing.

The eldest of the masters leans forward then, his eyes covered in film. He is old. He has seen many years on Jedha, many years in the service of the temple. “What would you do to know the truth, Initiate Imwe?”

“Anything.” He has stopped considering all his words. Baze would call this reckless. Baze would call this foolish. Baze would put a hand on his elbow, firm and grounding, and tell him to think before he reacts to their taunting, to consider the possibilities, to weigh the risks. Now there is nothing to balance him out, nothing to stay his hand, and Chirrut will get what he wants any way he can.

“The trial of seven masters.”

The trial of seven masters is one path to becoming a guardian. It is considered the highest path, the hardest. It is meant for those who are destined to do great things, those who want to sit on the panel before him, those who want to communicate directly with the Jedi. Chirrut knows that this is not a path meant to be taken lightly or frivolously. He is meant to balk at the suggestion, to argue that he would never shame the temple in this way by taking on the trial for his own desires. They want him to cave, to admit that their path, their world means more than his quest.

The masters have clearly underestimated him.

“Done.”

He turns and walks out before they can react, before they can withdraw the option or punish him for his insolence. Behind him, he can hear their hurried words, gasps of air, muttered bickering. In the Force, he can feel the swirls and eddies of their panic, of their shock. Chirrut takes all of it, gathers it into his arms and pushes it into his heart to steady himself, to strengthen himself for what is to come.

He will do this because it is what must be done in order to find the truth. And because once he is a guardian he can bring Baze back. This, he can say to the masters, this is my ward. He can stake his reputation on Baze, use his own honor to provide that which has been taken, use his status to shake away the shame that Baze has wrapped himself in by leaving. 

The trial of seven masters.

It will be a small price to pay; he will pay it gladly.

**I**

He remembers the press of lips against his neck, the stuttering breathing, and that low, light chuckle. All of this pushes strength into his hands, into his arms, when he lashes out. It provides him with a purpose, a focus other than the anger that curls in his belly, that rouses him in the middle of the night, that sends him pacing through the corridors of the temple, wanting to shout and scream but never finding the right words to properly express what it feels like, the hollow in the center of his chest that opened with the utterance of a word. A single word. 

One word that pulled his entire world down about his ears.

“No.”

When he lands on his back in the dirt, two minutes have passed. The impact of the staff across his chest aches, but not as much as the phantom press of lips on his neck.

**II**

Chirrut moves fast--faster than the eye can follow, Baze used to tell him when they would spar together, but all of Baze’s words were pretty, complimentary because he brimmed with love, it fell over the planes of him, a pitcher filled with too much water trying to catch more, but Chirrut never thought to question whether his reasoning was sound or whether it was just because of the love--but the master is infinitely faster. 

**III**

“Why don’t you give up?”

Chirrut is in the dirt, breathing heavily, and everything hurts. Seventeen minutes. This is the longest he has managed, but there are seven masters, and he has not yet even beat the first. Still. Seventeen minutes. It is something. 

“Why don’t you give up?” the master asks again.

When Chirrut looks at him, it is with a clenched jaw, two rows of teeth bared in a grimace, a strange face for anyone to see on him because he is known as the laughing initiate, the smiling initiate, the jokester. But his light is gone. Someone has taken all of the brightness out of his life, and he means to know why. 

“He left,” the master tries a different tact, and Chirrut doesn’t know if he is trying to get a rise out of him or if he thinks this line of conversation will produce a breakthrough, will honestly make him give up on the idea of finding out what happened. 

Chirrut pushes himself to his feet, and his body trembles and aches as violently as if he has just finished his first day of training as a youngling. Seventeen minutes and he feels ruined. He will have to train harder. “I will give up,” he says, and the master leans forward, the start of a pleased smile quirking at the corners of his mouth, but Chirrut holds up a finger to still him, to indicate that he is not done. It is not that simple. Nothing will ever be that simple with him again. “I will give up when you bring him back.” This, then, is his ultimatum, his line in the sand, the compromise that he will live and die on. And he knows that they will never meet him there. They will never dare back down now, and neither will he. This is something he is surprised they do not already know. Chirrut has yet to lose any argument, though he can lose a fight.

Chirrut has learned to be stone, to be unyielding. He learned it from Baze, though his reason for it is very different. Baze became a mountain of devotion, never leaning, never faltering, solid and sturdy and good through and through, always willing to give up what he wanted if it was better for others. He was as solid as the foundation of the temple. 

Chirrut, on the other hand, has made himself an unyielding force when it comes to getting what he wants because that is the only thing that matters right here, right now. Not the Force, not the temple, not becoming a Guardian just to be a Guardian. All of that has paled. It has turned to sand that threatens to blow away with every gust of wind. He wants his answers, and, yes, there might be another way to get them. He could march himself across the sands of Jedha, to the caves, he could demand them from Baze. But Baze would say nothing, he knows, still too devoted to the temple to even utter a word that might sway Chirrut away from it. 

So this is what he will do. He will get his answers the only way he can: by figuring out how to last longer than seventeen minutes, by discovering how to beat seven masters, and then he will stand before them with daggers in his eyes and they will present the truth to him. They will allow him to bring Baze back before their actions destroy the root of their temple.

Chirrut wipes his palms off on his robes as he continues to stare down the master in front of him, daring him to say a word. Nothing comes. “No? You do not accept the terms,” he taunts, words light but tone dark. The Force screams around him, angry and tumultuous, and Chirrut doesn’t know if it is because of him, because it picks up on the sorrow inside of him, or if something else is amiss. He doesn’t care. Right now he cannot care. He is focused, he is honed, as sharp as any kyber shard the masters work in the lower levels. 

“Then I will see you again.” His robes flap behind him as he strides away, and he tries not to falter, forces his legs to remain steady, even though all he wants to do is hunker into a ball, wants to press his back against Baze’s chest, let the strong but infinitely gentle arms wrap him up, and feel his laughter ripple through both of them. 

**IV**

Chirrut almost breaks his hand when he smashes it into the wall outside the trial room. The initiates who have gathered to ask him questions, to offer their condolences or words of wisdom, scatter at the action. They flee without even a backwards glance, their footsteps increasing in pace when Chirrut throws his head back and screams, wordless, just a shout of anger that pushes straight through him as strong as anything that he has felt in his entire life. 

He wants to rage. He wants to strike. He is coiled, seething fury, and there is nothing to temper him anymore, no steady hand to hold him, no soft words to talk him through it. 

There is nothing except a hot coal burning its way through his body as if he has swallowed it, letting it fall through the layers of his tissue and muscle and bone to disappear into the well of his soul.

**V**

The cheers go up when the first master yields but fall silent again in an instant when the second sweeps his legs out from under him almost before Chirrut has even realized that he is there. 

**VI**

Chirrut gets no sleep before the trial. The sheets and blankets that remained on Baze’s bed, that he refused to let anyone remove or touch, have finally lost the soothing, reassuring scent of the man he loves. He knows the scent--library dust, sand, something clean in the background because Baze was always the first to offer to do chores, and over all of it Baze just Baze, the unique note of his skin--but that is not enough for him. Yes, he can recall the scent, but he cannot recreate it, he cannot bring it back now that it has faded.

As he sits, wrapped in the blankets, crying silently because what else is he supposed to do when each passing day wipes little pieces of his life away, he presses his nose to them, again and again, trying to breathe it in and finding nothing. Just himself. Everything in their room smells like him now.

He never meant to be overpowering. He never meant to be all-encompassing. 

Chirrut never wanted the fact of who he is, what he is to eclipse anyone. 

In the morning, he barely manages to fight for three minutes before he has bowed out. The eyes that track him--master and initiate alike--are questioning because this Chirrut does not rage or saunter, no quips leave his lips. He will not even look at them as he walks. 

His feet take him to the library where he searches through stacks and stacks of scrolls until he locates the ones that he and Baze were set to translating during all those hours of punishment when they were younger. Baze’s lines are steady, his letters perfectly formed, his sentences intact, and Chirrut always thought the way that Baze wrote was the perfect way to show himself even if he had trouble with that most of the time. But Chirrut could see him, can see him, a downward turned smile in every loop, a small laugh with each line, a steady hand on every period. And he remembers the kiss, hurried and quick, his heart in his throat as he gave it, unsure what would happen next, moving before he could find out how Baze would react. Except that he didn’t follow, which hurt, which was a relief, which was not surprising.

Chirrut wonders what would have happened if he stayed, and it feels like his heart twists painfully.

When the master in charge of the library tells him to leave the scrolls, Chirrut hisses out a string of curses that makes the other man step back in shock and lets him go. Chirrut spends the night fixing the scrolls to the walls of their dorm. Baze cannot take his hand now, and he cannot curl himself up in the expanse of those warm, strong arms, but Baze can still cover him. 

Now he will be eclipsed.

**VIII**

It takes him longer than it should to see the patterns in the way the masters fight. Chirrut blames it on the fact that he has been distracted, emotional, overwrought and unseeing, unable to look properly because of the haze over his eyes, the tear sheen of loss, even when he is not crying. They always come at him in the same order like the steps on the temple, the fourth on the outside wall is the chipped one and it will not change places with the fifth because that is not the way of things, and each one favors a certain style. 

Chirrut is not going to win this by just going in with all of his power, all of his strength and speed, striking without a plan. He is not going to win if he keeps fighting like the wind. The wind can fight forever. It can wait eons to see an opponent defeated. He does not have forever.

Baze--exiled to the wilderness, cast out from nearly everything he has known his entire life, quiet and devoted and good but so gentle, so fragile at the heart of him--certainly does not have forever. 

So Chirrut goes in cautious and observant. He takes the defensive, limits his movements, conserves his energy. There is nothing flashy or angry in him this time around. It takes four masters to fell him.

That night, in the room dripping of Baze, Chirrut writes out his observations so that he can learn from them, plan for them. His hand is steady and slow, the words formed well and precise. There is nothing hurried in his pace. Slowly he begins to understand why Baze liked this task. 

Slowly he begins to love it as well.

When he is done, he tacks the notes up next to Baze’s scrolls and observes how the loops of his words lean towards Baze’s, unbidden, almost accidental. Except.

There are no accidents in the Force, the masters preach. There are no accidents here, Chirrut knows.

**VIII**

Chirrut meditates more now than he used to before Baze left. Part of this is because there is less for him to do. His world has shrunk down to two points; training and meditating. He has one goal, to master the trial, find out the truth, and bring Baze back. There are spans of days, weeks, when he is not in the midst of the trial. He is forced to take breaks because the masters will not “entertain his whims whenever he wishes” as they say. 

So there is all this time that he has trouble knowing what to do with. He can only train and plan so many hours in a day, can only walk the halls of the temple so long into the night, can only read the scrolls written in Baze’s hand so many times before he needs something else to do. 

Trying to learn to be one with the Force used to feel like a chore when he was younger. It was loud, rushing, always pulling at him, demanding things. Chirrut just wanted to be himself, just wanted to be left alone. It was insistent, but he was stubborn as well. They never got along even if he was strong enough in it that it seemed to be the only thing some people could see when they looked at him.

Baze was never like that, though. Baze always saw him. Baze always let him see himself clearer as well.

Through Baze it was so much easier to see the beauty of the Force, the wonder. Baze treated it like something splendid, in much the same way that he treated Chirrut, and it was hard not to love the thing that Baze loved. It was hard not to see some merit in it when it made Baze smile like that, when he could talk about it for so long. Normally stoic, silent Baze suddenly prompted into long spirals of words once he and Chirrut achieved something new, found some new understanding. 

They would meditate together, but sometimes Chirrut would just settle back and watch him because Baze quiet and happy was one of the most beautiful sights on Jedha.

Now when he goes into the trances he stretches his mind out as far into the Force as possible. He hunts for Baze, for the kyber caves, but it always shrieks at him. Too much, too loud, too deafening. There is too much kyber, too much energy rippling around it. They have hidden Baze from him in even this as well it seems.

However Chirrut has always been stubborn, and he never relents. Not even when the effort rewards him with migraines or a bloody nose. 

He fights with the Force for Baze as surely as he battles the masters. One day he will best both of them.

**IX**

The fifth master is efficient, sturdy, and he laughs off the quick blows that Chirrut deals him. He cannot be tripped, cannot be moved even when Chirrut employs everything he knows about taking down larger opponents. It is almost as though he has rooted himself into the ground. When he strikes, it is slow, easy for Chirrut to dodge, but constantly moving, blocking, striking keeps wearing him down. This is a test of stamina more than anything then. 

All he has to do is learn to keep moving. Past the point of exhaustion. Hone all the energy in his frame, in the Force, to continue when everything else says that he should stop. 

After an hour at the task--following one spent going through the four previous masters again--Chirrut sinks to his knees, breathing heavily, lazy dots swimming through his vision. The master just laughs and exits the room. Chirrut watches him disappear with a look of quiet horror on his face. They have given him a wall to best.

The tears fall like rain. Or is it raining? He cannot be sure for he is that tired. All he knows is that one moment his hands hurt and the next they are full of water. 

A wall.

He has bested walls before. You cannot go through a wall. You climb over it. 

It reminds him of the dashes up the temple wall in the garden. He could always find footholds and handholds so quickly, throwing his trust into them even if when they were not as true, as deep as he initially thought. They never failed him. He remembers sitting there, perched and waiting. Waiting for Baze to finish his climb, the one that always left the older boy shaking and breathing heavily, quietly panicked. Chirrut knew better than to offer him a hand, though. Baze never took it, sometimes he even glared it down until Chirrut pulled it away.

It was only once he was perched at the top, calming down, that he would allow the comfort of physical affection, Chirrut leaning into his side as he whispered stories, adventures into the air. Chirrut recalls the way that Baze’s eyes would glow as much because of the words as because of the way that the light caught on them. The climb made his skin run red under the bronze, the color of Jedhan sand at sunset. Chirrut had the big ideas, the grand desires. Baze added details, the smaller inflections that Chirrut missed. Like a fountain. Or a statue. A quiet place to sit and think.

The picture was only half done without both of their additions. 

Chirrut’s hands fill with more water as he thinks about all those climbs, how peaceful it was at the top of the wall where no one could find them, where they could decide what the world around them was going to be. 

**X**

“How do you know that he has not forgotten you?”

The trial ends when Chirrut is disqualified for punching the master in the face. The move is inelegant and beneath him, but Chirrut derives a strange, warm pleasure from watching the blood from the master’s split lip drip onto the floor.

**XI**

There are two trees in the temple garden that have grown together. The only hint that they used to be two instead of one is a seam that runs down the length of the trunk, a slight inward curvature to mark the point where they fused. Chirrut has never paid much attention to the tree, but it was Baze’s favorite so he settles himself under it the first time that he beats the fifth master. He was right, of course, it was all about going over the wall. 

Instead of trying to think about ways to defeat the sixth master, who is an unknown because she declined to fight that day which is rare but allowed, Chirrut is spread out on his back, looking up at the branches of the tree. It is blooming, limbs thick with dark green glossy leaves and small light pink petals that float down to cover him when the wind blows through it. It is peaceful and calm, serene, things that have been outside of his reach for so long.

He thinks about the Force trances he would take, with and without Baze. He thinks about the time he would spend sitting in their room watching Baze, waiting for him to surface. It always left Baze shaken and tired, as though he had tried to climb too high or trained too long. Chirrut wonders if Baze still tries to reach as far into the Force now as he used to, now that there is no one there to comfort him and soothe him when he rouses. He misses the feel of warm skin under his fingers, misses the overly large ears, and the all too often frowning lips. 

Petals drift across his face, like the light almost kisses Baze would sometimes press to his cheeks when they were alone, soft as his whispered words of adoration, and Chirrut lets the tears trickle down his face as he replays the moment:

“Don’t you love me?”

But this time, he changes the ending.

“Yes.”

And almost wishes he hadn’t because it caves his heart in all the more to acknowledge the truth.

He never really needed Baze to say it. Not when it had been etched across everything that his best friend had done for years once he really started looking. That didn’t mean that he hadn’t wanted to hear it, ached to hear it in that moment. 

Of course if Baze had said that, Chirrut would have never let him go.

Chirrut swipes at his eyes and continues to look at the tree, his gaze lingering on the point where the two trunks fused so many years ago that he wonders if any of the people living in the temple ever knew them as separate, distinct things. 

**XII**

The sixth master still will not fight him. He battles through the five again and then stands there in the middle of the trial room, waiting, eyes sparking in anger as she makes him wait. Words build on his tongue, rage floods through his mind and his blood. They are prolonging this now. They are keeping him from winning, from learning the truth. The longer they keep him at this senseless task, the longer Baze waits in the kyber caves, the longer they are apart.

Chirrut is not sure how much longer he can put up with this nonsense. 

One of the other masters informs him that the sixth fight will not happen that day, and Chirrut tosses his staff onto the floor with a resounding crack. “That is bantha shit,” he tosses out, voice a dangerous, trembling shadow.

The master quirks an eyebrow at him and shrugs. “Get that under control,” he says, “and then you might have a chance of defeating the sixth master.”

**XIII**

The anger is hard to shake. It curls through his limbs, guides his hands and his feet when he strikes. It snakes through his mind, pokes at all the wrong, unfair things that have happened to him, makes them stand out in stark contrast to all the good things so that they fall to the wayside, forgotten. It burns too brightly on the backs of his eyelids, and it taints the Force whenever he reaches for it.

Everything sounds like screaming in his ears, and his temper grows shorter to the point that Chirrut glares at anyone who looks at him. The other initiates start avoiding him, and the masters constantly sigh, that long, deeply disappointed one that he picked up when he was younger, the one that Baze was always trying to smooth away because he never wanted Chirrut to think that he was anything less than amazing.

Chirrut knows better. He is a disappointment. He cannot even finish the trial that he has started. He cannot save Baze. It is all running through his fingers, lost. Once he held a pitcher of water, and it was lovely, but he let it fall, there are only broken pieces on the ground that cut his feet to ribbons when he walks. 

When he gets to the trial room, it is locked. 

Chirrut’s jaw is iron, teeth clenched together in a way that it going to hurt later he can already tell, but that pain is nothing compared to the fiery fist around his heart, the twist of failure in his gut. He was supposed to have finished by now. 

Baze is waiting. 

Not for the first time he lets himself wonder if this fact is as true as he thinks it is or if the master might have been right. What if Baze has forgotten about him or become bitter because Chirrut has left him there? It has been over two years since he left. Chirrut wonders if Baze thinks about him at all.

And then he immediately feels terrible. 

There is nothing he can do about it at the moment, though. The door is closed, locked, the masters are apparently not entertaining his demands today despite the fact that it was scheduled. Chirrut does not realize that he has raised his fist until the pain arches through his hand when it comes in contact with the wall. The Force pulses around him, thick as honey and slow and faintly red. 

“This is a disservice to him and yourself.”

He recognizes the voice. It belongs to the sixth master, the one who will not fight him, the one who keeps stalling the process. He wants to turn the anger on her, but it doesn’t feel right. It spits and falters, dying in the middle of his chest, a fire that has just been doused with water. “I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know what I have to do to show that I am ready to fight you.”

“Not all the trials are battles,” she says as though he should have figured this out already, as though it is as simple as breathing. “Do you know what your biggest problem is, initiate?” 

Chirrut looks at her, and she is regarding him with a quiet expression in her eyes that he is not quite sure how to read. He shakes his head because this does not seem to be a question that she asks expecting him to answer. There are lots of problems that he could pull out and strew in front of her. As far as Chirrut is concerned, his biggest problem is them, that they have somehow managed to convince Baze that leaving the temple, leaving his life, is the best course of action that he can take. Quickly on the heels of that problem, bound to it, is the fact that Baze believed them.

“You become distracted very easily, and you lack focus.” She holds up a hand before he can argue that point with her. “You’re very smart. The Force is quite strong with you naturally. It just fits against you, doesn’t it? The piece of some puzzle. It’s always been there so you don’t understand the absence of it very well or how much other people would give just to be able to touch an inkling of what you have, ready, at your hands. Instead you use your time for this worthless endeavor.”

This is a lecture that he has heard before, and Chirrut has become tired of the same old litany, the endless examples of how he is not living up to his potential, how he is wasting gifts that other people would be thrilled to receive. As if he would not offer them up on a silver platter if he could. If there was a way to give away the Force, to wrap it like a present and hand it over, he would have put it in Baze’s hands long ago, thrilled to see how it would have made his eyes light up, how he would have laughed to hold it, to understand the thing that had danced away from his grasp so many times. It isn’t until she calls what he is doing worthless that he properly pays attention again, head snapping up, defiant. “It’s not worthless.”

“Isn’t it? Why not?” 

He opens his mouth and nothing comes. What he wants to do is be able to reach his hands inside of his chest, take out his burning heart and show that to her, let her see the dark pit of his questioning, doubting stomach, the way it drops to his knees in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep because Baze isn’t there anymore, because he worries whether Baze can sleep, on his own, surrounded by the kyber, which is painful to him. He wants to pull the Force out of his head and push that into her questing hands, tell her that if she wants it so damn much she can have it, they can trade. The Force for a million more quiet moments with the man whose hand is steady when writing out scrolls, whose smile is ready and calm for the younglings, who never once complained about any task they set him to even when it was a punishment because he was always at the ready when it came to the temple. Devout, wonderful, good Baze. 

“Come back to me when you can answer that question, initiate,” she says, turning to walk away from him, to disappear once more. Before she does, though, she looks back at his face. “Nothing is all light, Chirrut. Everything has darkness. That’s the entire point of balance. That’s the entire point of the Force.” She touches her cheek as though troubled by a memory. “Sometimes you have to go back to go forward.”

Normally Chirrut loves the riddles of the Force. He might not be the scholar that Baze was in their youth, but he liked listening to it all. The stories about the Jedi, the teachings, the parables, and all the fables with their secret meanings to be dwelt on and discovered at length. That is not what he wants now. Now he wants action. He wants it to be fast and efficient. He does not want to have to spend time turning things over in his brain, running his hands over surfaces looking for the catch that will open the box and finally expose everything to him.

Hasn’t he waited long enough? Hasn’t this been going on long enough?

“Life itself is a trial, initiate.” The words find him even though the master has disappeared around the corner, leaving him alone in the hallway with his throbbing hand and his aching heart.

**XIV**

These are the things that Chirrut has learned about Baze over the years:

Baze never puts himself first. His devotion is as strong as a fist of iron, and it does not allow him the option to make his own decisions. If it did, Chirrut isn’t sure whether Baze would be able to make his own decisions anyway. He would look to someone else to direct him because, at the heart of him, there is a long stretch of Baze that is passive, that waits, that follows, needing to be pushed into action. It can be infuriating to always lead.

Baze is silent so much of the time. Slow to speak and stoic, trapping everything inside of his body rather than letting it out because he doesn’t want to burden anyone with his fears or his sadness. As if his pain isn’t good enough to give voice to. As if no one would be there to soothe it away. Sometimes he doesn’t understand jokes and attempts at levity, at trying to get him to smile in order to lighten his load go nowhere. He will simply sit there, blinking, his eyes great and big and wet, completely misunderstanding the intention. More than anything, Baze needs comfort, care, nurturing. It can be overwhelming to see him hurt and not know how to fix it.

Baze is particular, fastidious, and hates a mess. It makes him short tempered when their meager possessions are out of place, and he can spend an entire afternoon cleaning, organizing things until they are just the way that he likes them. Everything needs to be arranged and taken care of in this fashion, even his time. He prefers to plan things rather than take them as they come, hates change, wants everything to be steady, reliable. This can feel suffocating to Chirrut who lives on whims, a moment’s desire, the thrill of not knowing what comes next.

Baze is surly in the morning because he is restless at night. Thoughts plague him, press down on him, emerge from the blackness and nag at him, nipping at his ears and crowding into the corners of his soul, never giving him peace. When he greets the morning it is with bloodshot eyes and dark bags, sighs, and muffled complaints. He is snappish and overly sensitive with the first rays of the sun, with the first words he hears. And he does not like noises when he rouses, does not like talking. He would rather sit in quiet meditation than be bothered when all Chirrut wants to do is share dreams and touch him and tease, glad to see another morning, glad to have another day. This can make him feel disconnected from Baze.

Baze holds him up above everyone else as though he is something golden, something precious and perfect. Baze worries about ruining him, losing him, holding him back. Baze worries about everything. There is enough worry coiled within his body to blanket the moon of Jedha if it was pulled out and made manifest. Sometimes Chirrut thinks he could drown it in, the worry, the adoration, the clear and concise and crystaline love that Baze will never give voice to, that Baze lied about when asked point blank.

These are all things that Chirrut has learned about Baze over the years. They are the darkling things in him, the habits and the personality traits that grate against Chirrut’s nerves, that make him agitated or frustrated. Chirrut counts them to himself in his mind, and discovers that they do not matter. In the thick of things, in the long term, they do not matter. They do not tip the scales. 

He loves Baze still. The good and the bad and his big ears and the gruff laugh that he uses instead of words so often. And the way he just stands down when all he should do is fight.

That last one, though. Chirrut is going to have to work on that last one.

Everything that Baze is is dear to him. Everything that Baze is is worthy to him. Maybe not to them, maybe not to their grand scheme, whatever they have plotted out for him and his future, for the future of the Guardians, but Baze is worthy to him. And he will hear nothing else. He will know nothing else.

Chirrut has been fighting more for his scorned heart this entire time than for Baze, he realizes, and it makes him feel low and small. 

When he slips into the Force trance, it is easy, like stepping into a pool of warm water. There is no hesitation, there is no shouting. All of the sharp edges, all of the swirling, tempestuous eddies have smoothed. His heart and his mind feel soothed, though loss still dances at the edges. This is okay, though. Life is loss and gain. There is a balance. And what is lost can be regained. A separation does not have to be final. He lets go, he sinks. He stops fighting. 

He stops fighting.

He surrenders the way that he remembers doing so years ago when he knew that Baze was with him, awake to catch him when he returned, or sinking with him, a bright companion, flush with wonder and joy.

I never really knew the Force until I knew it with you, he thinks, and the Force thrums back at him, around him, a giddy, peaceful, quiet thing. Chirrut surrenders, and it surrenders, and he doesn’t understand why he was fighting so long because this is much better. This is so much better.

Which is when he feels it, the hum. It’s too far away to reach, pulled taught across the expanse of his mind and blocked in by so much energy that he’s surprised it managed to escape at all, but it finds him, it whispers across his heart like wind through the trees. It touches like Baze, heavy but gentle, warm like sunlight, soft like flower petals. 

Chirrut surfaces with tears in his eyes, but for once they are of joy. 

The sixth master clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, the only noise she makes as she leaves the room on silent feet before her words reach him, “Yes. That it worthwhile.”

**XV**

Chirrut remembers, halfway through the fight with the second master, the way that Baze would fist his hand into the sash on his robes and use it to pull him bodily against him, stealing a kiss. An unexpectedly brash move from the normally sedate Baze. The recollection breaks his concentration, and he tumbles to the ground, the trial over barely after it has begun. The watching initiates pause as though waiting to see how he will react. Chirrut surprises them all with his smile, a touch sad at the corners of his lips, and by the way he bows to the master before taking his leave, quiet, solemn, serene.

What is one more trial when love flares at him in great bursts across the desert? Chirrut wants Baze to be proud of him, to understand the weight of this and that will not happen if he continues to strut and prattle on like a child when he is defeated. Accept a loss graciously. Accept every opportunity to learn. Be thankful to the temple. Be thankful to the masters. Be considerate.

Baze’s actions burn starkly and clearly in all of his own.

**XVI**

The final trial, the one against the seventh master, is also one with no fighting. After besting the five masters--but not the sixth because she only needs proof once--he stands in the middle of the trial room breathing heavily, waiting, unsure what is going to happen next because just when it seems like he has managed to wrap his head around the rules of this situation they change on him. It is probably meant as another lesson, Chirrut thinks. He swipes sweat out of his eyes and waits. 

The room is silent. The other initiates were escorted out by the masters after the fifth fell. Chirrut is alone in the room, and that makes him wonder if the seventh trial is simply against himself, though he thought that was the point of the sixth. He tries to keep in mind that he knows nothing, that all is as the Force wills it, that he cannot make this what he wants it to be, that it will be what it is. It is hard. It is so much more difficult that he wants to admit even to himself to give things over to the Force in this way. He has fought. He has fought with it for so long.

The door at the far end finally opens, and the eldest master comes forward. His hands are folded across his chest, and his steps are firm but slow as he crosses to stand in front of Chirrut. Chirrut bows and keeps his eyes on the ground, waiting to see what the master will do.

“Do you still want the truth?” the masters asks, and inclines his head in such a way that Chirrut can catch the gesture and knows it is okay, it is expected for him to look up.

Their eyes meet and all Chirrut sees is the film over the older man’s eyes. He cannot see himself there at all and this catches him slightly off guard, but he recovers quickly. “Master?” he says, a question because surely there is more to the trial than just this, this does not seem like nearly enough to count.

The man laughs and then places his hands into his sleeves. “The truth, Imwe, do you still seek it? You must be sure. The truth sometimes isn’t what we think it will be. Sometimes it hurts more than you can ever imagine it would. Sometimes it is better than expected, and sometimes it is worse. Can you deal with whatever you are told no matter the circumstances? Or would you rather concede? We can leave it here. We can stop right now. You can walk out of the door and remember him as you want to, as you need to. No one will ever be able to take that. The truth will not be able to take that.”

Chirrut can see why this is a trial. The statement is worded in such a way that it makes him think about the worst case scenario, the terrible things that could come to light, that nothing he knows is real, that all of this, this love, was fabricated in his own mind. Someone else might have bent to this suggestion, but Chirrut will not. He has felt it, after all, the love echoing its small way across the Force, weak or strong, a whisper, a prayer, a song, a shout. Every day is it different. Sometimes he has to search a long while to find it, to pick it out from the background noise, and other times it is the only thing he can hear. 

The one thing it has never done since he learned to listen is falter. So neither will he.

“Yes, master. I still want the truth.” His voice is steady and does not shake either in fear or rage. He is steady, a port in the storm.

The master chuckles, a low, pleased sound, and then nods. “As the Force wills,” he says in acknowledgement of Chirrut’s decision. “It was decided that your relationship with Baze Malbus was a singular distraction for the both of you. We feared that it would prevent you from being able to achieve your true potential. This decision was made because we thought it would be what was best for the temple, for you. You are so strong in the Force. We could not risk that your potential would not be achieved because of an attachment with another. We did not want the emotional to lessen you in any way.”

Chirrut feels an ache at the core of him as though the words are spikes that are being driven into his soul, but he says nothing. He chooses not to react, which is what they want he is sure. They want him to react, to halt the words, stop the truth. No, he will carry it. Baze has carried it out into the desert, to the kyber caves, through the years. This is as much his weight to carry as Baze’s, and he will not run from it.

“We told Baze Malbus of this, and he was presented with the option of leaving the temple to keep from distracting you further.”

“Did you never think of how the loss of him would impact me? You cut my hands off, you tied my legs together, you bound me in chains. We have lost three years that could have been very valuable. What could have been achieved in that time if you had left well enough alone?” When all of this started, he would have spat the words out, harsh and barbed, but now his voice is level except for a slight wavering of concern at the tips. 

“It was a calculated risk with you, and we were wrong in our accounting certainly.”

Wrong with him. Not wrong with Baze, though. They measured him properly. They knew where he would fold and bend and concede. “What was the other option?” Chirrut asks.

The master looks at him as though he does not understand. 

“You said he was given the option, which implies there was another choice. What was the other choice?”

“We never gave him one.” The master smiles. “The beauty of knowing who we were dealing with was that we did not need to present him with options. Baze Malbus was always going to choose the welfare of the temple over his own. Baze Malbus was always going to take the path that led to the greater glory of the Whills.”

“And me,” Chirrut adds, which earns him another quirked eyebrow. “You presented this as being the better option for the temple, and the better option for me. There was no choice there for him.”

“Baze Malbus the devoted,” the master says, and it lacks kindness, admiration. It almost sounds as though the master is ashamed to know that there could be someone who would do that for the temple, would toss aside everything that they have, everything that they know, just because that is said to be for the good of the thing itself.

Chirrut knows what it is to feel that way, but he does not take up the mantle that is offered to him. “Baze Malbus will be the most devoted guardian of us all.”

“When you bring him back from the kyber caves,” the master says, and his voice is flat, a line that betrays nothing in regards to Chirrut’s plan, which is transparent, evident to anyone who looks at him. “He may not return with you.”

“That will be my next trial then.”

The master smiles.

Chirrut wins. 

 

There is meant to be a ceremony to appoint him as the newest guardian before he takes on the proper robes, before he takes on the title, but Chirrut will have none of it. There cannot be a ceremony without Baze there, and the masters tell him that if he leaves now it will not be done at all. He will still be a guardian for he has passed the trials, but there will be no fanfare, nothing to mark the change in his status to the temple at large. Chirrut doesn’t need it so he leaves. He puts on the robes, and he packs a few things into a satchel to take with him because it a long journey to the kyber caves. Four days if one travels at a moderate pace, walking in the day and sleeping at night when the winds are harsh and cold. 

Four days. 

But it has been three years, and Chirrut is not sure that he can drag the separation out for four more days. Chirrut is not sure he can stand to not be able to fly over the sands of Jedha itself to arrive there in front of Baze in an instant. His ceremony will be held in the light in Baze’s eyes when he sees him again. His ceremony will be in the touch of his hands against his skin, and his scent enveloping him again as close as any piece of cloth. 

After five battles, his body hurts. There are bruises across his legs and his chest and his back, but they are not bad enough to stop him. Nothing is bad enough to stop him. Not now. The masters bid Baze to go, for the sake of the temple, for the sake of Chirrut, and he left. As they knew he would. And now Chirrut will collect him from where he has been exiled. Chirrut will show them that they are stronger together. Their attachment does not lessen them. 

Four days. If he walks quickly, if he takes no rest, he should be able to cross the sands in two. Force willing. The wind flaps the new robes around his ankles, and he is not used to the weight of them yet, does not even know how they look on him because Chirrut took no time to seek out his own reflection before leaving. He wonders what Baze will think of his actions as he walks. He wonders if Baze will relent and come home.

He wonders what he will do if Baze says no.

The kyber caves are lovely, of course. The kyber sings to him. Chirrut thinks that he could live very well in a kyber cave.

 

He knows that he should be more tired as he crests the hill, sand sliding slightly under his feet. Two days of plodding through the sun and the wind, surrounded only by the landscape of Jedha, which is lovely but not always that inviting, should have sapped all the strength from his body, but each step only seems to buoy his spirits and his heart. Each step makes the Force glimmer a little brighter, makes the torch in his heart flare a little more. That whisper of love remains under all of it, a thread that has drawn him here, shown him the fastest path across the desert.

The first thing he sees is the mouth of the cave, a hungry opening in the sand. The second thing he sees is the man who sits in quiet meditation outside of it. And his skin is the color of the Jedhan sand, and his hair has grown long, wavy, and Chirrut wants to bury his hands in it, press his face into it to feel it against his cheeks. The man has a beard on his gentle, familiar face, and Chirrut wants to run his lips over it, learn this new landscape. He cannot see the ears hidden as they are by hair, he cannot see the eyes because the man has his hands over them, but he knows him. 

He would know him anywhere.

“The fool,” he says by way of making his presence known, and Baze pushes his hands back and opens his eyes. And there, oh there, is the thing that Chirrut will endure any trial to see, that light that glows in him brighter than anything has any right to be. 

 

_Don’t you love me?_

_Yes._

 

Chirrut wins. They both do.


End file.
